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[Archive] [Wylandriah91] Newbie Guide Thread - first day huh? Click Here for Help!

A thread that was copied from the original Wizard Forums.

SkullTraill

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So the first forays into the magical world can be pretty bewildering. There's a lot out there. It's a pretty ancient and very far-reaching topic, basically every indigenous culture in the world has some kind of magical tradition, and in modern times even more have shown up and begun to develop. First thing to know, and this should go without saying, but magic isn't how it is in the movies. It's not like spells are just a recipe you can read and just poof, stuff happens instantly and obviously, with sparkly lights and breezes that come out of nowhere to disturb your candle flames. It is a lot subtler than that.
For a lot of people, that may mean it becomes boring, worthless, not what they wanted. Those people are simply just not destined to be witches or magicians, in my opinion. It's a long road and it isn't just going to happen on it's own. It takes work and dedication.
Those who aren't put off by the idea that there might actually be some serious work involved, welcome to the clan! I'm going to do everything in my power to make your first forays into the Craft a lot easier than they would have been without this post, and help you out with some shortcuts and some fundamentals so that you don't have to find them yourself, but you will need to go out and learn a lot under your own steam too.

Day 1 research - where to start for brand-new magicians.

In my personal opinion, a good deep trawl through forums and Wikipedia is your best friend in the early days and really can't be substituted by anything else. YouTube is decent, in a way, especially if you're reading or sight is impaired, but the quality on WF and written articles in general is better, with the added advantage of being interactive.
Go and get a proper background in the history and origins of magic. Click a link, then another link, then another link. Take notes of things that stick out to you and feel right. Find out about moon phases, colours, directions, elements, days of the week, planetary hours/days; and start learning about herbs and oils (that'll take a while-big subject), sigils, maybe even spirits if that's your thing. Learn about the tools different paths value, and the rituals they use. You don't have to use them all yourself, you're just figuring out what your own style is at this point.
Find out the names and the basic philosophies of as many different paths as you can, so that you can make an informed decision on which one - if any - you want to take for yourself, or at least become more in tune with what styles resonate with you more than others. If you don't find any one path that definitely suits you, you can always be a Chaos magician and use pieces of everything. Knowledge is power.
Practice learning under your own steam, because it's a skill that you will always value and never regret for the rest of your life, no matter what. It'll improve your ordinary life, including school/college/work, as well as building your strength of character and independence, all of which in turn will also build your magical potency in the meantime, without you even having to think about it. It'll develop latently as you develop yourself.

Book learning and practical first steps.

Most people who are just starting out ask me about beginner's books. Let me just say one thing. No beginner's book is quite as good as the internet. As far as I'm concerned, a whole lot of them are essentially a waste of money, except that they do have exercises. I will recommend this book as one of those - “The Craft – A Witch's Book of Shadows” by Dorothy Morrison has some good exercises in it for mental training and discipline and is easy to follow and read. For more detail and a more traditional outlook, my absolute favourite beginner series is the "Green Witchcraft" trilogy by Aoumiel. Absolutely fantastic but each book is thicker than The Craft on its own and there's three of them so definitely for more dedicated beginners.
That said, most things that your average beginner's book has in terms of information is probably already discussed ad nauseum on the forum. Beginner's books are also often skewed towards one path or another (usually Wicca), without even mentioning that there may be another way. The Craft is actually like that as well, although that is basically the only criticism of it that I have.
No one can tell you what path to take. They can make suggestions, but they can't tell you. You need to decide that yourself, by searching and finding out as much as you can. Newbies complain about not having a real teacher, I'd argue that the internet is even better than a real teacher. It's always there, it never tires, it never gets annoyed, it never makes you do anything, it's all there, it's all up to you and you can learn literally whatever you want, whenever you want, and ask any question and get an answer almost instantly. Anything you can't find with a search, you can ask in a forum.

Wizard Forums Etiquette (and having some sense)

It can be pretty bewildering to be a new magician to be fair. I've seen it time and time again myself. Someone, probably quite young, has stumbled upon magic as a real thing and has been just completely overrun with the mad, clamouring crowd of websites all proclaiming real magic and miracles, and is just looking for someone to spoon feed them what they want to know. Let me just say, pretty much no-one is going to walk you through all the very, very basics. The newbie/teacher ratio is not in your favour, and people just don't have the time.
Most magicians you'll come across in the general internet ecosystem will expect you to be able to look after your fundamental learning by yourself, like we all had to. I'll give you some of the tools and basic knowledge to get you going, but again, you will have to do a lot of work by yourself. The best thing is, most questions you could ask, especially when just starting out, have probably been asked before and a search through the web or through WF itself will find your answers for you.
There's a lot of good reasons I emphasise doing some basic research yourself before engaging with forums. If you ask something really newby that you can easily find the answer for with a Google search, people will think you're a troll or hoping to be spoon-fed, and won't be willing to help you. They will actually probably be actively irritated by it. Even if you stop, and continue to ask better questions later on, they'll be suspicious. The trolls in any community can be pretty patient and sophisticated, especially on potentially inflammatory sites, which witchcraft sites always are.
So just be aware that a certain degree of personal responsibility for your own learning is absolutely necessary for getting along with the denizens of such sites as this, and I know I sound like a broken record but it's just because it really is such an important point to drive home. Have some sense. As a starting point, you should at the very least know the basic definitions of and differences between the main magical paths, which I'd personally consider to be Hermetics, Kabballah, Wicca, Satanism, Shamanism, Traditional Magic, Chaos Magic, Voodoo/Hoodoo and Seidr/Norse.
You can pick up info about anything more obscure than those few along the way, and if you see something that piques your curiosity, follow that rabbit hole and don't forget to keep taking notes. A nice grounding on the various gods and goddesses of various pantheons will be very helpful too, and can be a very interesting and fun read or watch, but it's not 100% necessary. The more you know, the better, really. Follow your curiosity.
Another thing that's important to mention is that there are predators and mad people everywhere. Just because someone says something does Not mean it is true. You have to develop your nose for bullshit when working with other magicians. Magic attracts madness, and can create it too. That applies to wild claims, tall tales and ESPECIALLY to anyone asking for money for anything. DO NOT jump at the chance to have an "experienced magician" do a working for you, when you have no way of knowing if they even did it. PLEASE use your brain and take your time to ask people about users who are selling services. Even people who seem qualified on the surface can have quite a bad reputation amongst their peers. I'd be of the mind that you should just learn how to do it for yourself anyway.

What to do today.

Ok, so I've explained the importance of research. That's the first thing you should be able to do if you want to be a magician. Start today, no excuses. You should also, today, start meditating as soon as you can. Even for one minute a day. The quicker you start the quicker you start to develop your magical ability. It's your practical homework, and if you don't do research today, then meditate. It is the single most important skill for any and every magician to be able to quiet and focus the mind. If your energy is all over the place, hyper, scattered, fractured, you really are at a serious disadvantage in the amount you can do, and the strength and depth of your power.
There are tons of different types of meditation. Sitting cross-legged and saying "om" is just a stereotype at this point, although it is a valid meditation. You can meditate lying down, sat in a chair, hanging out of a tree. You can meditate using sound or silently, you can meditate to clear your mind or to fill it with one topic, you can meditate to heal yourself or gain wisdom or to get over someone or some event in your past. It is incredibly versatile and incredibly important.
You can still achieve some good results with simple spellcasting without years of dedicated meditation, so don't be discouraged from it if you find it very difficult at first. You can still be effective at casting spells if you are dedicated and quite grounded anyway, you just won't be as potent as you can be with a trained and focused mind. Just like you can win a fight without being a martial artist, but your chances aren't as good. The further you go without some attempt at meditation, the less likely you'll continue to get accurate, fast results, so stick with it. If you have serious trouble meditating under your own steam, use guided meditations to start. No excuses, because if you want to be serious, meditation is your number one tool, and with guided meditations you literally just have to lie down with headphones on, so suck it up.
Most people get this far and go, ugh, not for me. If that's you, then I'm just gonna say it, that's pretty shallow dude. Meditation is good for you, it's healthy, it's solid, scientifically backed awesomeness. It's another all-rounder. It'll improve your mundane life as well as your magical life and it can feel like a brain massage
Tounge
it is so flexible and so useful and so potentially pleasurable there is no reason that you wouldn't do it. Some people might have serious difficulties with it because of ADHD or what have you, to those people I recommend you go outside and tíre yourself out first by jogging or hiking or some other physical activities. It'll do you the world of good.


So just to sum up, I've covered

-How, what and where to start learning

-Important spellcraft/ritual basics; moon phases, colours, directions, elements, days of the week, planetary hours/days

-A few main types of magical practice; Hermetics, Kabballah, Wicca, Satanism, Shamanism, Traditional Magic, Chaos Magic, Voodoo & Hoodoo, and Seidr/Norse

-Some basic etiquette of the online magical community

-The importance of meditation, and how to get started with guided meditation


If I was to give you homework, it would be for you to;

-Get yourself a dedicated notebook and start taking some decent notes. This can be separate or the same book as your Book of Shadows, up to you. I like to only put complete spells/rituals in my BoS

-Go out and research the different paths that exist and some of the history of the occult to help you figure out what you want your own practice to be

-Take notes and follow the rabbit hole where it leads

-Join the forum, even just to lurk at first.

-Meditate for at least a minute. Try for five.

Something that I think is important for me to say at this moment is something that I think only those of you who've reached the very end of this post will appreciate. Magic is something else. For those of us that really strongly feel the call to it, even just finding out that it is real is incredible, and any amount of work seems like nothing compared to the joy we feel knowing that there is more to life than the mundane and the everyday.
I can now tell you, after over sixteen years of practice, it is totally worth every ounce of work you put into it. With a bright, optimistic outlook, a good attitude and a bit of magic, you really can achieve things that others could only dream of in this day and age. Honestly, it has filled a hole in my life that I really thought would remain empty forever. Take heart from someone further down the line that there truly is more, and it's pretty damn amazing.

Keep going.
 

YiSaga

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Yeah, at least drop a letter.
What's been helping to know is that we're suppose to tape the visible world and each other, erryone a snitch because it's the proper function of nature. Absorbing the different shades of the sky and earth of different Shades of day. It's because the image of things translates into the imagination an is a sort of experiential energy. You start with where you're at to grab on to. The eye of intent rather than the total being. One can get anywhere if they can climb properly.
Initiation to Hermetics is sure to get thwomped mad hard. Wonderful classic post that fits as well here as there.
 

guwope

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Thank you for this i am a complete beginner. I've been interested in magic for so long now but I've honestly been confused about where to start and what to do. I usually just meditate and manifest things but when it came to magic I didn't know where to start what I wanted to do and one thing I've always told myself is I want to learn everything which is gonna take a long time but definitely worth it. I just don't know if I should focus on one thing at a time and when working with spirits or deities should I only work with one. I started out with santa muerte and sadly I feel as if I haven't gotten any results. Im going to take your advice about doing the research and taking notes. I been really interested in voodoo and sometimes I feel as if u can't really learn everything without knowing someone or having someone teach you. I get lost when I'm doing research and learning about stuff. It confuses me and I don't know exactly what to do. I feel as if I should be practicing something specific. I am a complete newbie and this has helped me get a little bit more of an understanding on what I should be doing. I guess I'm leaning more towards chaos magic. I really want to work with deities and perform my own spells and everything but sometimes I think I'm not ready for that .I need to learn how to protect myself and things of that nature. Im sure I will figure it out though. Sometimes I want to work with a deity in order for them to assist me in learning if that would be possible. I don't know
 

Diluculo_DelFuego

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So the first forays into the magical world can be pretty bewildering. There's a lot out there. It's a pretty ancient and very far-reaching topic, basically every indigenous culture in the world has some kind of magical tradition, and in modern times even more have shown up and begun to develop. First thing to know, and this should go without saying, but magic isn't how it is in the movies. It's not like spells are just a recipe you can read and just poof, stuff happens instantly and obviously, with sparkly lights and breezes that come out of nowhere to disturb your candle flames. It is a lot subtler than that.
For a lot of people, that may mean it becomes boring, worthless, not what they wanted. Those people are simply just not destined to be witches or magicians, in my opinion. It's a long road and it isn't just going to happen on it's own. It takes work and dedication.
Those who aren't put off by the idea that there might actually be some serious work involved, welcome to the clan! I'm going to do everything in my power to make your first forays into the Craft a lot easier than they would have been without this post, and help you out with some shortcuts and some fundamentals so that you don't have to find them yourself, but you will need to go out and learn a lot under your own steam too.

Day 1 research - where to start for brand-new magicians.

In my personal opinion, a good deep trawl through forums and Wikipedia is your best friend in the early days and really can't be substituted by anything else. YouTube is decent, in a way, especially if you're reading or sight is impaired, but the quality on WF and written articles in general is better, with the added advantage of being interactive.
Go and get a proper background in the history and origins of magic. Click a link, then another link, then another link. Take notes of things that stick out to you and feel right. Find out about moon phases, colours, directions, elements, days of the week, planetary hours/days; and start learning about herbs and oils (that'll take a while-big subject), sigils, maybe even spirits if that's your thing. Learn about the tools different paths value, and the rituals they use. You don't have to use them all yourself, you're just figuring out what your own style is at this point.
Find out the names and the basic philosophies of as many different paths as you can, so that you can make an informed decision on which one - if any - you want to take for yourself, or at least become more in tune with what styles resonate with you more than others. If you don't find any one path that definitely suits you, you can always be a Chaos magician and use pieces of everything. Knowledge is power.
Practice learning under your own steam, because it's a skill that you will always value and never regret for the rest of your life, no matter what. It'll improve your ordinary life, including school/college/work, as well as building your strength of character and independence, all of which in turn will also build your magical potency in the meantime, without you even having to think about it. It'll develop latently as you develop yourself.

Book learning and practical first steps.

Most people who are just starting out ask me about beginner's books. Let me just say one thing. No beginner's book is quite as good as the internet. As far as I'm concerned, a whole lot of them are essentially a waste of money, except that they do have exercises. I will recommend this book as one of those - “The Craft – A Witch's Book of Shadows” by Dorothy Morrison has some good exercises in it for mental training and discipline and is easy to follow and read. For more detail and a more traditional outlook, my absolute favourite beginner series is the "Green Witchcraft" trilogy by Aoumiel. Absolutely fantastic but each book is thicker than The Craft on its own and there's three of them so definitely for more dedicated beginners.
That said, most things that your average beginner's book has in terms of information is probably already discussed ad nauseum on the forum. Beginner's books are also often skewed towards one path or another (usually Wicca), without even mentioning that there may be another way. The Craft is actually like that as well, although that is basically the only criticism of it that I have.
No one can tell you what path to take. They can make suggestions, but they can't tell you. You need to decide that yourself, by searching and finding out as much as you can. Newbies complain about not having a real teacher, I'd argue that the internet is even better than a real teacher. It's always there, it never tires, it never gets annoyed, it never makes you do anything, it's all there, it's all up to you and you can learn literally whatever you want, whenever you want, and ask any question and get an answer almost instantly. Anything you can't find with a search, you can ask in a forum.

Wizard Forums Etiquette (and having some sense)

It can be pretty bewildering to be a new magician to be fair. I've seen it time and time again myself. Someone, probably quite young, has stumbled upon magic as a real thing and has been just completely overrun with the mad, clamouring crowd of websites all proclaiming real magic and miracles, and is just looking for someone to spoon feed them what they want to know. Let me just say, pretty much no-one is going to walk you through all the very, very basics. The newbie/teacher ratio is not in your favour, and people just don't have the time.
Most magicians you'll come across in the general internet ecosystem will expect you to be able to look after your fundamental learning by yourself, like we all had to. I'll give you some of the tools and basic knowledge to get you going, but again, you will have to do a lot of work by yourself. The best thing is, most questions you could ask, especially when just starting out, have probably been asked before and a search through the web or through WF itself will find your answers for you.
There's a lot of good reasons I emphasise doing some basic research yourself before engaging with forums. If you ask something really newby that you can easily find the answer for with a Google search, people will think you're a troll or hoping to be spoon-fed, and won't be willing to help you. They will actually probably be actively irritated by it. Even if you stop, and continue to ask better questions later on, they'll be suspicious. The trolls in any community can be pretty patient and sophisticated, especially on potentially inflammatory sites, which witchcraft sites always are.
So just be aware that a certain degree of personal responsibility for your own learning is absolutely necessary for getting along with the denizens of such sites as this, and I know I sound like a broken record but it's just because it really is such an important point to drive home. Have some sense. As a starting point, you should at the very least know the basic definitions of and differences between the main magical paths, which I'd personally consider to be Hermetics, Kabballah, Wicca, Satanism, Shamanism, Traditional Magic, Chaos Magic, Voodoo/Hoodoo and Seidr/Norse.
You can pick up info about anything more obscure than those few along the way, and if you see something that piques your curiosity, follow that rabbit hole and don't forget to keep taking notes. A nice grounding on the various gods and goddesses of various pantheons will be very helpful too, and can be a very interesting and fun read or watch, but it's not 100% necessary. The more you know, the better, really. Follow your curiosity.
Another thing that's important to mention is that there are predators and mad people everywhere. Just because someone says something does Not mean it is true. You have to develop your nose for bullshit when working with other magicians. Magic attracts madness, and can create it too. That applies to wild claims, tall tales and ESPECIALLY to anyone asking for money for anything. DO NOT jump at the chance to have an "experienced magician" do a working for you, when you have no way of knowing if they even did it. PLEASE use your brain and take your time to ask people about users who are selling services. Even people who seem qualified on the surface can have quite a bad reputation amongst their peers. I'd be of the mind that you should just learn how to do it for yourself anyway.

What to do today.

Ok, so I've explained the importance of research. That's the first thing you should be able to do if you want to be a magician. Start today, no excuses. You should also, today, start meditating as soon as you can. Even for one minute a day. The quicker you start the quicker you start to develop your magical ability. It's your practical homework, and if you don't do research today, then meditate. It is the single most important skill for any and every magician to be able to quiet and focus the mind. If your energy is all over the place, hyper, scattered, fractured, you really are at a serious disadvantage in the amount you can do, and the strength and depth of your power.
There are tons of different types of meditation. Sitting cross-legged and saying "om" is just a stereotype at this point, although it is a valid meditation. You can meditate lying down, sat in a chair, hanging out of a tree. You can meditate using sound or silently, you can meditate to clear your mind or to fill it with one topic, you can meditate to heal yourself or gain wisdom or to get over someone or some event in your past. It is incredibly versatile and incredibly important.
You can still achieve some good results with simple spellcasting without years of dedicated meditation, so don't be discouraged from it if you find it very difficult at first. You can still be effective at casting spells if you are dedicated and quite grounded anyway, you just won't be as potent as you can be with a trained and focused mind. Just like you can win a fight without being a martial artist, but your chances aren't as good. The further you go without some attempt at meditation, the less likely you'll continue to get accurate, fast results, so stick with it. If you have serious trouble meditating under your own steam, use guided meditations to start. No excuses, because if you want to be serious, meditation is your number one tool, and with guided meditations you literally just have to lie down with headphones on, so suck it up.
Most people get this far and go, ugh, not for me. If that's you, then I'm just gonna say it, that's pretty shallow dude. Meditation is good for you, it's healthy, it's solid, scientifically backed awesomeness. It's another all-rounder. It'll improve your mundane life as well as your magical life and it can feel like a brain massage
Tounge
it is so flexible and so useful and so potentially pleasurable there is no reason that you wouldn't do it. Some people might have serious difficulties with it because of ADHD or what have you, to those people I recommend you go outside and tíre yourself out first by jogging or hiking or some other physical activities. It'll do you the world of good.


So just to sum up, I've covered

-How, what and where to start learning

-Important spellcraft/ritual basics; moon phases, colours, directions, elements, days of the week, planetary hours/days

-A few main types of magical practice; Hermetics, Kabballah, Wicca, Satanism, Shamanism, Traditional Magic, Chaos Magic, Voodoo & Hoodoo, and Seidr/Norse

-Some basic etiquette of the online magical community

-The importance of meditation, and how to get started with guided meditation


If I was to give you homework, it would be for you to;

-Get yourself a dedicated notebook and start taking some decent notes. This can be separate or the same book as your Book of Shadows, up to you. I like to only put complete spells/rituals in my BoS

-Go out and research the different paths that exist and some of the history of the occult to help you figure out what you want your own practice to be

-Take notes and follow the rabbit hole where it leads

-Join the forum, even just to lurk at first.

-Meditate for at least a minute. Try for five.

Something that I think is important for me to say at this moment is something that I think only those of you who've reached the very end of this post will appreciate. Magic is something else. For those of us that really strongly feel the call to it, even just finding out that it is real is incredible, and any amount of work seems like nothing compared to the joy we feel knowing that there is more to life than the mundane and the everyday.
I can now tell you, after over sixteen years of practice, it is totally worth every ounce of work you put into it. With a bright, optimistic outlook, a good attitude and a bit of magic, you really can achieve things that others could only dream of in this day and age. Honestly, it has filled a hole in my life that I really thought would remain empty forever. Take heart from someone further down the line that there truly is more, and it's pretty damn amazing.

Keep going.
Just read this for the first time tonight. Will do my research, I know a lot of my posts, despite innocent questions or observations, quickly lose their point to others opinions. But again, research is my friend.
 
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